Radio Shack is being delisted and is getting ready to close its stores. Rumors are flying that some of the stores may be taken over by Sprint or even Amazon.

Surprised? Me neither. How many of us could write the obituary that's already appearing nearly identically everywhere. It seems that everyone knows what killed Radio Shack except for the people who ran Radio Shack. The iconic store had no hope of surviving as a competitor to big box stores and online retailers, and refused to embrace its roots among true electronics enthusiasts. I'd like to say farewell, but Radio Shack has already been dead for nearly two decades. It's amazing that the zombie stayed animated for as long as it did.

I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that Best Buy is next. They may appear bigger and stronger, but they are already widely known as "Amazon's Showroom."

If you've got access to a Fry's or Micro Center, you're among the lucky ones who still have a local place to go to for those quickie parts and gadgets. We're willing to pay a bit of a premium for that convenience, but when RadioShack (note the name was converted to CamelCase around the time they zombified) was charging five times the price for that premium, even that became unworkable.

Someone's got to be a friend to the maker community. There's an opening for someone to do it right.

Radio Shack went off my list of places back when they thought it was smart
to completely ignore the ham radio market.

Oh, you could still, even to the very end, find oddball connectors and dodads
if you were willing (I was) to root through their parts drawers.

But the END was clearly marked when I went into one of the stores a few years
back and asked for a roll of 50 ohm coax cable. The attendant said "what's
that?" And I exploded.

"Back in the day" they sold a 2 meter handheld, 2 meter mobile rig, and a
10 meter SSB/CW rig - and I think it was the 10m rig that got them in trouble
and started them toward where they are today. You see, they sold a LOT of
those rigs. Not to hams, but to CBers who quickly realized that the Radio
Shack "ten meter" rig also covered "eleven meters" (otherwise known in the
US as Citizens' Band, or CB - an unlicensed zoo). So the FCC stepped in and
made them pull the product. And the idiots at Shadio Rack Corporate thought
they may as well drop all the ham gear.

I have that 10M mobile (HTX-100). Nice rig actually. I did packet radio contacts with BBS's in Germany and keyboard to keyboard contacts with other hams in Surinam and Mexco and all over the US on a regular basis with that rig and a TNC and an old 8086 computer (Amstrad) and a COCO II.

Before all of that, I liked the fact that you could get schematics for most of the items they sold. I found satisfaction in being able to see the schematics to the item I purchased. I loved to to read up on electronics back in the 70's from books from the library. When I made my first purchase (from Radio Shack) of a 3 channel 11M hand held radio, I was hooked. From there, I made kits from what I had learned from an old 100 in 1 kit and bought parts from Radio Shack. Even before all of that, I had a battery of the month card. Fun times. It is a hole for me, but they lost their way.

Thanks for the ping back IG. Sad to see them go as well. Not for myself, but more for my son and daughter. I am already having a tough time showing them how to things at home without the need to go online and research what you already would be able to do from the parts bin of a well stocked electronics parts store.

Thankfully I have one around the corner with a full line of ECG / NTE and Jim Pak parts as well as kits and other fun bits. Hope they stay around, if not, I can order from DigiKey (or day trip it to the city desk), but that would not be as fun as browsing the isles of what RS used to be. I guess I am spoiled by having an old time Radio Shack in the neighborhood that is not tied to the corporate one :-)

I really like Radio Shack in the abstract / in theory, but I rarely actually
shop there anymore.

I bought a camera there, 5 years ago, gift for L, which turned out to be
a very bad buy - we sold it and bought something else.
I went in there looking for Apple products a year or two ago and they sent
me walking over to the Apple Store, despite what was on their website for
inventory.

I miss the days of leafing through digi-key catalogs (before PDF's were common). I kinda miss wasting time flipping through Computer Shopper back in the day as well. I guess I do have more shelf space these days for other crap to build up :-)

MFJ, among us hams, has earned the "Mighty Fine Junk" nickname. You really
must have a discerning eye along with experience in order to find the gems
among the garbage in their catalog, which is only marginally better than their
web site. But there ***are*** gems to be found.

Same goes for the Cushcraft (CushCrap) catalog for antennas and antenna related
hardware. If you know what you are doing, lots good to be found amidst the
total crap that otherwise abounds.

Example: Cushcraft 5-element Yagi (beam) for six meters.
Worst antenna ever designed.
But....
Buy one anyway, do not use the smallest (most forward) director but save
it and the mounting hardware. Use it, along with some other stuff you can
buy at any big-box home improvement store, and build my 4-element TriYagi
(see the QST article for all measurements). MUCH cheaper than gathering all
the hardware from "scratch." And much less work!!